Arthur Frommer, the author of the $5-a-day Europe guidebook that revolutionized leisure travel by convincing average Americans to travel abroad on a budget, has died. He was 95 years old.
Frommer died of complications from pneumonia, his daughter Pauline Frommer announced Monday.
“My father opened up the world to so many people,” she said. “He deeply believed that travel was an enlightening activity and one that did not require a large budget.”
Frommer began writing about travel while serving in the U.S. Army in Europe in the 1950s. After selling out of the guidebooks he wrote for American soldiers overseas, in 1957 he launched what would become one of the most recognizable brands in the travel industry, self-publishing Europe for $5 a day.
“The book struck a chord and became an instant bestseller,” he recalled in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press to commemorate the book's 50th anniversary.
The Frommers brand, still led by daughter Pauline, is one of the most well-known brands in the travel industry, with guidebooks to destinations around the world, an influential social media presence, podcasts and radio We offer programs.
Frommer's philosophy – staying in inns and budget hotels instead of five-star hotels, sightseeing on your own using public transport, and eating with locals in small cafes rather than fancy restaurants – is 20 It changed the way Americans traveled in the mid-to-late century. He said he prefers budget travel to luxury travel “because it leads to a more authentic experience.” The message encouraged ordinary people, not just the wealthy, to vacation abroad.
It wasn't a bad thing that his book hit the market, as the rise of jet travel made Europe more accessible than crossing the Atlantic by ship. The book was so popular that there was a time when you could visit places like the Eiffel Tower and find every American tourist holding a copy of Frommer's guidebook.
Mr. Frommer's advice has also become so standard that it's hard to remember how radical it seemed in the days before cheap flights and backpacks. “This was really pioneering,” Tony Wheeler, founder of guidebook company Lonely Planet, said in a 2013 interview. Before Frommer, “there were guidebooks that told you everything about church and temple ruins,” Wheeler said. But the idea of wanting to eat somewhere and find a hotel and get from point A to point B, I have a lot of respect for Arthur. ”
The final edition of Frommer's groundbreaking series was titled Europe and sold from $95 per day. The series was canceled in 2007 because the concept no longer made sense when hotels could no longer charge less than $100 a night. However, despite a series of sales that began when Frommer sold his guidebook company, the Frommer publishing empire did not disappear. Simon & Schuster. It was later acquired by Wiley Publishing, which sold it to Google in 2012. Google quietly shut down Guidebook, but Arthur Frommer took the brand back from Google in a David vs. Goliath victory. In November 2013, my daughter Pauline and I relaunched our print series with dozens of new guidebook titles.
“I never dreamed that I would work so hard at my age,” the then 84-year-old told The Associated Press.
Frommer remained a well-known figure in the 21st century travel world, speaking out on his blog and on his radio show until the end of his career. He dislikes giant cruise ships and slams travel websites where consumers post their own reviews, saying they are too easily manipulated with fake posts. And he coined the phrase “Trump Recession” in a widely cited column predicting a decline in tourism to the United States after Donald Trump was elected president.
Frommer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, to a Polish father and an Austrian mother in Jefferson City, Missouri, during the Great Depression. “My father worked one job after another, and one company after another went bankrupt,” he recalled. He was drafted into the military after graduating from Yale Law School in 1953.
His first glimpse of Europe was from the window of a military transport plane. Whenever I had a weekend break or a three-day pass, I would hop on a train to Paris or hitchhike on an Air Force plane to England. He eventually wrote the GI's Guide to Traveling in Europe, printing 5,000 copies on a typesetting machine in a German village a few weeks before his military service ended. They cost 50 cents each and were distributed by the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes.
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Shortly after returning to New York to practice law at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he received a telegram from Europe. “The book has sold out, can you arrange for it to be reprinted?'' he said.
Shortly after, he used a month's leave from his law firm to write a civilian version of the guide. “I visited 15 different cities in 30 days, waking up at 4 a.m. and running around the streets, looking for good, cheap hotels and restaurants,” he recalled.
The resulting book, the very first “Europe on $5 a Day,” was much more than just a list. Frommer wrote with almost poetic wonder, “Venice is a wonderful dream.'' “Make sure to arrive at night, when the city's wonders creep in slowly, piece by piece… In the darkness, small clusters of candy-striped mooring poles appear; gondolas approach with lanterns hanging from their prows. ”
Eventually, Frommer gave up law to write guides full time. His daughter Pauline accompanied him on the trip in 1965 at the age of four months with his first wife Hope Arthur. “They used to joke that the book should be called “Europe on Five Diapers a Day,'' Pauline Frommer said.
He said he avoided first class travel until the end of his life. “I fly economy class and I try to have the same types of travel and the same experiences that the average American or the average citizen of the world encounters,” he said.
As Mr. Frommer grew older, his daughter Pauline gradually became a supporting force for the company, promoting the brand, managing the business, and even writing some of the content based on her own travels. Her relationship with her father was tender and respectful, as she summarized in a 2012 email to the AP: wisdom. His opinion comes from his social values, whether you agree with it or not. He is someone who puts ethics at the center of his life and weaves ethics into everything he does. ”
In addition to Pauline, Mr. Frommer's survivors include his second wife, Roberta Broadfeld, and two granddaughters.
